Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Songs

Little's song*
Littler's song*
Little and Littler's song*

*Disclaimer: I promised myself that I wouldn't insult you with embarrassing disclaimers about the fact that I can't sing, I'm not a guitar player, I use a 10$ microphone, and I have no time or knowledge to properly produce songs. Since I didn't disclaim said things you can take the music as it is.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

For grammy, grampy, and cousins

See what we mean? She shoulda been French.

Click.

Monday, May 5, 2008

Non sequit, her

Little, bursting into the bathroom and thrusting her doll on daddy's lap: She needs insulin, daddy!
Daddy: better give her something sugary!
Little: mommy's ice cream!

[a few minutes pass]

Little: enchilada, daddy!

She's a strange duck, her.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Littler at 8 months

Littler is turning into such an 'older' baby these days, and we really love it. While she is still very needy baby, she also does lots of really cute things and interacts with us in ways that give us a little glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. One of our favorite things that she does these days is DANCE! It's so cute! All we have to do is sing a nice upbeat song or even give her a nice percussion beat, and she'll put her head down, look up with her eyes, put a veeeeery serious
expression on her face, and bob her head and body up and down. Even just writing it now gives me the cutesies!



Another thing she does, which is not always cute, is to say "mamamamamamamama" when I walk out of sight into another room, or past her when she is feeling sad or wants to be held (which is nearly AAAALLLLLLL the time). Am I a bad mom to think that is not always cute? It's just that I'm not so sure she's actually saying 'mama', even though the syllables are only used pertaining to me...








Littler is fascinated with music, and Daddy's one tried and true method of making her happy is to pull out the guitar and sit her on the floor in front of him and play it for her, and often sing at the same time. She especially loved recently when Daddy let her sit on his lap and help him play. You know if the guitar doesn't make her happy (or at least not sad), that she either needs to eat or sleep REALLY BADLY!



Littler also popped out her first tooth a couple weeks ago, wakes often at night, and doesn't seem to be anywhere near crawling. And she's getting really darned annoyed at her big sister for pushing her over and stealing her toys. Little seems to have taken it upon herself to make Littler's life miserable, to the point that she takes away whatever Littler is playing with and replaces it with something much more boring, if she replaces it at all... sometimes Little pushes Littler over, then goes to timeout, and when she comes back later to apologize, Littler cries when Little comes close to give her a kiss or hug, because she's afraid she's going to do something mean again. Little also wants to have whatever Littler has [nursing, a diaper change, sleeping in the crib, the same outfit, baby food, binkies...]. Littler is probably going to grow up to be a tough kid.

*Note: We adjusted the brightness of these pictures to look right on our laptop, but it looks different on our other computer. Please let us know if these pictures look dark to you (to the point of obscuring what you can see in the picture)!

Into (and back out of) "The Wild"

This past Friday night, thanks to Peter's advance planning, we were able to finally take a small backpacking trip like we've been wanting to ever since we got a whole bunch of awesome backpacking gear (in preparation for a trip we'll be taking to Costa Rica in January 2009). Peter had also already organized our camping gear into two big tupperware boxes that sit in the closet, one labeled 'Car Camping' and the other labeled 'Backpacking (and Car Camping Part 2)', so all we had to do was pull out the correct box, strap it all together and pack up a bit of food and some diapers and warm baby clothes, and then toss it in the trunk. With all that put together so easily, we prepared for our backpacking trip in about the same amount of time it takes to prepare dinner, and off we headed for Castle Rock State Park.



This state park has one campground, which requires a three mile hike in. When we got there, we were very pleasantly surprised how this state park makes you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere, even though in reality you are nestled in between houses and a shooting range, among other things. This is the first place within an hour of us that we've managed to feel this way, so the place was scoring high with us right off the bat. As we hiked in (mostly downhill!) we passed through so much beautiful scenery and some awesome views, and we had the early evening pre-sunset lighting to add some ice cream to our cone. Both Little and Littler were troopers and did very well riding in their comfy backpacks, and even Mommy and Daddy were feeling really good, even though the combined weight we were carrying (including kids) was 125 pounds! (I'm not embarrassed to admit that I was only carrying 42 pounds of that! Peter was carrying more than half his weight on his back!)





Our campground was much less primitive than we expected it to be, and even had pit toilets, picnic tables, firewood for sale, and a fire ring with a grate. The only thing we made use of was the picnic table. Although Little had a hard night, morning did eventually come (the night felt like daaaaays to me, but they always do when I'm camping--I just can't ever sleep!). We started the day off before sunrise and explored near the campsite before strapping the rest of the weight to our backs and starting on the uuuuuphill hike back to the car. This was the part where we were both happy that we're in pretty good shape. I know, three miles does not sound like much, but, under these circumstances, it was a pretty darn good workout.





On the way in, we saw so many things we wanted to photograph, but we needed to be into our campsite by sunset so we didn't have much time to stop. We promised ourselves that we would capture all of these beautiful sights the next day. Unfortunately, we chose a different way back, thinking it rejoined our other trail very shortly, when it in fact, did not join up with it until we were nearly back to the car. We did see some more pretty sights, and a huge variety of insects, but it just didn't match the beauty of the day before.



All in all, it was a great trip, and we're excited to take more backpacking adventures (which will have the added bonus of conditioning us for the backpacking/hiking we'll be doing in Costa Rica).



Enjoy the pictures!